Students

Brittany Zick, BME Jr

Masters Global Health StudentWith a background in Biomedical Engineering, Brittany focuses on the equipment and infrastructure needs required to run a neurosurgery program in a low-resource setting.

Harrison Farber, MS3

Medical StudentHarrison is studying the geographic variables related to the areas throughout Uganda in greatest need of surgical care. Identifying these variables and regions will be important for planning the expansion of surgical services around the country.

Jackie Corley, MD

Neurosurgery PGY 1I am working on non invasive methods of measuring ICP, building collaboration with neurosurgical practitioners and bioengineers to create innovations tailored to resource poor settings, and outcomes research from neurosurgical interventions from Duke and other institutions.

Akash Patel

UndergraduateAkash Patel is working with the Duke Bass Connections team. His focus is on infection control in pre- and post-operative care in Uganda.

Benjamin Kuo

Masters of Global Health StudentNeurosurgical risk-prediction models in the context of Low- and Middle-Income Countries based on the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and a locally established surgical database in Mbarara Uganda. Employing both multivariate statistical regressions as well as next generation machine learning modeling approaches.

Caesar Lubangakene

Masters of Global Health StudentMy passion is maternal and child health and exploring strategies of averting maternal and neonatal mortality by improving quality of service in the private sector in Uganda. I seek to qualitatively explore the challenges and opportunities (administrative, contextual, and clinical) for providing quality obstetric and neonatal care services in private health facilities in Uganda.

Michelle Roberts

Masters of Global Health StudentMichelle Roberts is a first-year graduate student in the Master’s of Global Health program. She works with Dr. Janet Bettger as her Research Assistant and serves as the Project Coordinator for the Global Alliance for Disability and Healthcare Innovation (GANDHI). Her thesis explores patient experience with newly acquired disability after an acute neurological event in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Shem Opolot

Masters of Global Health Student

Luciana de Andrade, RN, PhD

Sr Postdoctoral Fellow

Casi Larish, RN, BSN

MSN Acute Gero. NP Student

Amber Bang, BSc

ABSN Nursing Student

Alexa Bramall, MD

Neurosurgery PGY 1

TuanDat Nguyen

Sophomore Undergrad

TuanDat Nguyen studies global health and psychology. His research interests include analyzing the safety habits and risk behaviors of motorcycle-taxi drivers in Tanzania, as well as observing the efficacy of hospice and palliative care options in Uganda.

Kelsey Graywill

Sophomore Undergrad

Kelsey is an undergraduate Program II major at Duke. Her experiences in understanding and promoting models for healthcare delivery in low-resource settings in India, Nepal, Jordan, and the Czech Republic through fieldwork as an EMT and student researcher, ultimately lead her to become involved with the infection control team on DGNN’s Bass Connections project to improve neurosurgery patient outcomes in Uganda.

Elias Carvalho, BSc PhD

Student

Deena El-Gabri

Masters of Global Health Student

Sandra Batakana

Undergraduate

Joseph Incorvia

Masters of Global Health Student

Joe is interested in patients’ perceptions of health care and access to care. His thesis explores the use of behavioral economics and qualitative methodology to elucidate patients’ perceived preferences for receiving surgical care. This summer he will be pursuing this research at New Mulago Hospital in Kampala, Uganda.

Jonathan Chang, MS3

Medical Student

Joan Nambuba, MS

A recent graduate of the School of Medicine’s Master of Biomedical Sciences program who majored in Neuroscience as an undergraduate student at Duke, Joan is passionate about healthcare and improving the patient experience. Born at Mulago Hospital where DGNN’s joint Neurosurgery Unit is housed, she is excited to return to Uganda in a professional and academic context with the Bass Connections team where she will focus on Medication Management.

Chinemerem Nwosu

Undergraduate

Aspiring to attend medical school, Chinemerem plans to co-major in Global Health and Biology. She is interested in reducing health disparities and improving access to healthcare in African countries. She is currently working with the DGNN Bass Connections team to improve neurosurgery patient outcomes in Uganda through patient-family education

Samantha Sadler

Undergraduate

Sam Sadler serves on the Duke Bass Connections team to investigate neurosurgical outcomes in Uganda. She is interested in the impact of infection transmission, analyzing context-specific features of Ugandan health care to generate comprehensive, feasible infection control protocols for low-resource settings.